Author: Hettie D.

My name is Henrietta (Hettie) Dombrovskaya. I was born in Saint-Petersburg, Russian (actually, back then – Leningrad, USSR) in 1963, and immigrated to the United States in 1996. I love Saint Petersburg, the city I was born and raised in, and I think it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. Similarly (but differently) I love Chicago, and can’t imagine myself moving somewhere else in the observable future. I have three children, Igor, Vlad and Anna, all adults living on their own, and one (so far) granddaughter Nadia. I also believe that my children are the best thing that happened in my life. As for my professional life, I am working in the field of Information Technologies. When I was twenty, I’ve declared that the databases are the coolest thing invented and that I want to do them for the rest of my life. Thirty plus years later, I still believe it’s true, and still, believe that the databases are the best. These two statements together imply that I think a person can have it all, and indeed, I think so! Keep reading my journals to find out how I did it.

Black Sesame Lava Cheese Tart

Saving the recipe…

Hettie D.'s avatarHealthy Cooking - Hettie's Way

Finally tried this recipe today, and it is delicious! Still unsure whether or not it’s too much work for busy me 🙂

Copying the whole recipe here:

ngredients:

  • 2store-bought pie crusts, thawed

  • 228 g.or 1 blockfull-fat cream cheese, softened

  • 80 g.or 1/3 c. + 2 tbsp.black sesame paste

  • 35 g.or 2 tbsp. + 1 tsp.milk (any fat percentage)

  • 120 g.or 1/2 c.heavy cream

  • 75 g.or 1/3 c. + 1 tbsp.granulated sugar (may use more if sweeter is desired)

  • 6 g.or 2 tsp.cornstarch

  • 5 g.or 1 tsp.lemon juice

  • 4 g.or 1 tsp.vanilla extract

Directions:

  1. In a medium bowl, cream the full-fat cream cheese and sesame paste together using an electric beater.

  2. Add in the milk and heavy cream and use a spatula to cream the mixture together until smooth. Do not use an electric…

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Elementary School In the Soviet Union: My Notebooks

I plan to write a series of blog posts about school, similar to the series I wrote about the university. I do not have as many pictures from my school years as I would need to illustrate everything I am going to write about, but I have a lot of my school notebooks saved by my mom.

I have two of my very first notebooks in storage, and I will scan them at some point in the future, but I didn’t want to wait until this future came, so here are several others.

All of them are from my first grade. There was no Kindergarten class at school, and I already described our Kindergarten education when I blogged about my detsky sad. What I started in September 1970 was a first grade; whatever was before was not considered school.

The name of this notebook is the Russian language. That’s what “writing” was called. In the first grade, our parents signed our notebooks.

Our notebooks were not at all like nowadays notebooks. The cover was made of thin paper, ad there were only twelve pages in each, We had six notebooks circulating at any given time: two for the Russian language, two for math, and two for penmanship. At the beginning of the lesson, you would turn in your notebook with your homework and pick up your other notebook with your yesterday’s homework graded by your teacher. You would do your classwork in that notebook, then do the homework in the same notebook, and the process would be repeated the next moring.

That’s classwork for May 12. I got “five” for it, which is the equivalent of an A
That’s the homework for May 19. I got “four,” which is equivalent to B. The mark is down because I made one correction.
Continue reading “Elementary School In the Soviet Union: My Notebooks” →

One More Time About My Cup Holder

The only cups that fit perfectly in this cup holder are IKEA cups! It was made for IKEA and designed to hold any IKEA cup model! And any non-IKEA (aka US) models just hang unevenly…

Time Is Still A Non-Renewable Resource

Time-time-time… You can never get the wasted time back. And you never have enough time t do everything you want to do. Ok, I am not sure about you, but I definitely don’t!

One of the newest things I am trying to fit in my life is this: I have the option to write about pretty much anything I want. And not only to write but to be published. And not only published but also paid for it.

And I have so many ideas! In fact, I, like many others, write these imaginary articles in my mind when I walk around. I feel like I already wrote something, just to realized that it is still all in my mind 🙂

Today, work came on it’s way. I had to start something at 6 AM, hoping that I would be done by 10 AM, and ended up being barely done by 4-30 PM with still some cleanup having to be done later.

I still hope to find some time during the weekend to write at least one article. I swear, it is almost written! I just need to type it up 🙂

One More Memory

Just another memory, one of many, prompted by a conversation with an online friend.

One of my closest high school friends was accepted to the same university as me, and our friendship (and heart-to-heart conversations) continued. Her mother was a biologist, and she would go on research expeditions to the Far North every summer. Sometimes, my friend would accompany her. Once, when we had one of those heart-to-heart conversations, she told me how she witnessed a helicopter chase of the children. 

At school, we were told that the Soviet government takes care of the Native tribes of the Far North and brings civilization to them; and that children receive a high-quality education in the boarding schools and do not have to migrate with raindeers. And now I am listening to my friend L. telling me a different story.

Imagine a helicopter approaching, and all the children run into hiding. It lands, and the people from the helicopter start to walk from one chum to another and ask whether there are any children in this household. And the parents respond to the effect of “what are you talking about?! We haven’t got no children!” And if they find some, everybody screams and tries not to let the children go. 

And the most puzzling thing is that when a helicopter brings these children back home for a summer break, their parents say: we do not want these children; they are not our children. They do not know how to live in the tundra anymore; they are not ours; you can take them back. 

I remember L. telling me that with her big beautiful eyes wide open in disbelief. And we shook our heads and laughed: silly people! We were not small children at that time, we were nineteen or twenty, and we still chose not to see,

Even years later, when I read books about Native Americans in Brazil who were trying to stay on their ancestors’ land while capitalists wanted to seize it for oil production, it never occurred to me that the same thing was happening in my country. When I read about the extermination of Native people in the US and boarding schools in Canada, it never occurred to me that the Soviet Union was doing the same thing. 

Like in many other cases, it’s not even that somebody was hiding the truth from me; I never bothered to process the facts I knew. I never thought: these are the same Indians as in the books. And I can’t explain why.

My historical posts are being published in random order. Please refer to the page Hettie’s timeline to find where exactly each post belongs and what was before and after.

She Said Movie

I finally watched “She said” over the weekend. I knew it was a great movie and wanted to watch it for a while, but somehow, finding a place online to watch it was challenging! It is not available on Amazon, and it was not on Hulu (I do not use Hulu, but while searching for a place to watch, I decided to accept a free month of Hulu, which they sent to me for my birthday). I finally found it on Apple TV (yes, I also accepted three months free of Apple TV, it came with my new iPhone, and I am going to drop it because I do not use it!)

So, I finally watched it. What a great movie! I do not want to write at length about it, it just checks all the marks. Watching it, I could not stop thinking about how deeply sexual harassment is enrooted in all aspects of our life. I recall my teenage and young adult days, and even later – I can’t believe to which extent it was expected! We never thought about complaining, it was just a force of nature you had to consider. I realized one small but rather astonishing fact while watching – we never thought kissing against somebodies would be abuse! You were not raped, what you are complaining about?!

The movie emphasized one more time the power of numbers and the importance of everybody coming together and raising their voices against whatever evil we want to fight.

Anne-Sophie Mutter

I went to her concert on Sunday – it was a matinee performance, so I took mom with me. It is always hit or miss (I never know whether she will enjoy a performance or start critiquing random things). This time, it was a miss – she said that the music didn’t engage her and then proceeded to criticize the musician’s clothes and other unrelated stuff. But enough about that.

Anne-Sophie Mutter is one of those artists who are so well-known that it feels like they “always were around,” and you might be unsure whether they are still alive. It was almost the case this time: I knew that she was the most famous violinist for the past twenty five years. The program mentioned her “forty seven years of performing.” So when you see her coming to stage in a bright pink strapless ball gown, it feels surreal :).

She is great. The concert lasted for two hours, and she was on stage all the time, and then did three encores!

The second part of the concert was “The Four Seasons,” and it was as great as on this video:

The First Day Of School!

In the Soviet Union, kids started school when they were seven. Although we had a “prep” group in the detskiy sad, it still wasn’t considered “school.” Going to school meant that you were “a big kid,” and everybody counted the days left until their first “September First” (the official start of the school year countrywide). Very soon, the novelty would vanish, and at least half of the kids would start to hate school, but it was not the case on the first day of your first school year.

During summer in Estonia, Grandma Fania gave me lessons. I could read decently by that time, but she also taught me cursive, and we did a lot of writing exercises. I have no idea why she did this – it was by no means required. Possibly, she kept the memories of the Gymnasium in the Czarist Russia she attended – to be admitted, you had to demonstrate the ability to read, write and do basic arithmetic. Or maybe, she just wanted me to be in the top of my class from day one.

In any case, I was ready and excited. I had my new school uniform on with the “holiday” white apron, and I had flowers in my hand – that was also a must for September 1 – the flowers were given to the teachers, and everybody had to have a bouquet.

The school was less than ten minutes walk away, but I was afraid to be late!

Continue reading “The First Day Of School!” →

Video From My Birthday Party

I just realized this post was sitting in the drafts for two weeks!

Bureaucracy

I finally finished mom’s citizenship application (I could not submit it because the government payment website was down for maintenance :), but that’s fine, I will submit it on Monday). Anyway, it was one of these things sitting there, annoying like hell, and you can’t do anything else because you know you have to do this first, and then everything is stalled.

I am finally done, but I will be happier when I pay the application fee and it is officially submitted. It looks like things are moving fast these days, so I hope her application will be processed soon.

Now, I need to submit all the remaining documentation for my taxes. The fact that I had a long questionnaire for my tax returns sitting there at the same time as my mom’s application was sitting there, and both seemed equally urgent, didn’t help any of the two processes. But now, I should be able to finish both!

It’s ridiculous how I spend weekends these days – trying to catch up with things instead of relaxing and recharging. But it does not look like I have alternatives.